Language processing in posterior fossa tumour patients: Psycholinguistic insights into the word-finding ability

Background Word finding - the ability to retrieve and produce appropriate words in response to prompts or visual stimuli - is impaired in some patients with a posterior fossa tumour. Yet, few studies use preoperative assessment as a baseline, and an in-depth linguistic analysis of tasks assessing word-finding ability remains limited. The current study aims to fill this knowledge gap by analysing pre- and postoperative word-finding ability and identifying its linguistic predictors. Method 38 English-speaking patients (19 males and 19 females), aged between 2,5 and 17,6 years and diagnosed with posterior fossa tumours were assessed before and after surgery. Performance was assessed using a picture-naming task, Wordrace, measuring both accuracy and reaction times. These measures were interpreted in terms of their correlation with linguistic levels (i.e., lexical, semantic, phonological). Results Patients exhibited a significant slowing in word-finding speed following surgery, while accuracy remained stable across assessment points. Despite this decline in speed, the influence of psycholinguistic factors on word-finding ability remained consistent. Lexical-semantic variables predicted word-finding speed, whereas accuracy was influenced only by lexical variables. Conclusion The findings suggest that although general performance declined postoperatively, the underlying linguistic processes engaged during word finding were preserved. The study emphasises the importance of longitudinal assessment in patients with posterior fossa tumours and the need to compare patient performance against normative data.